TY - JOUR
T1 - Placement educators’ perspectives of international social work students’ sociopragmatic communication skills
AU - Grieve, Averil
AU - Ta, Binh
AU - Ross, Bella
N1 - Funding Information:
The 15 semi-structured one-on-one telephone interviews between placement educators and the second author were used as the basis of analysis for this paper. The interviews ranged between 18 and 65 min in duration with questions focussing on the placement educator’s experiences of supervising international students. There were 13 female and two male educators.The mean years of supervising was 2.9 and the mean number of students supervised was 8.5. Educators had experience supervising between 1 and more than 15 international students (mainly from China) and had supervised social work students from between 2 to over 30 years. While two placement educators were concurrently educators at a tertiary institution, all others were employed directly by the agency providing the placement opportunity. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim by a paid transcription service. Ethics approval for the research was granted by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project No. 0254).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators’ perspectives on international students’ communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students’ general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students’ understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies.
AB - International students who speak English as an additional language report experiencing communication issues while completing their studies and work-integrated learning placements in a range of Anglophone countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. To address this issue, accreditation and registration bodies for a number of health professions, such as social work and nursing, have advocated for increasing the test score requirements for university English language entry. However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, decisions concerning ways to address communication challenges need to take into account the unique communication skills required for functioning in specific workplace settings. It is therefore essential to identify the types of communication issues occurring during work-integrated learning opportunities (e.g. placement) and to then assess whether these should be addressed by raising general English proficiency or providing structured learning opportunities for profession-specific communication development within the course content. The present study uses sociolinguistic theory to examine placement educators’ perspectives on international students’ communication issues using the context of social work placement. It draws on the thematic analysis of interviews with 15 placement educators in Australia. One major finding is that international students’ general proficiency or ability to use specific linguistic tools (pragmalinguistic competence) is not a key area of concern for educators. The main challenge seems to involve the students’ understanding of sociocultural norms underlying workplace communication (sociopragmatic competence). This finding suggests that, rather than increasing English language entry requirements, universities need to provide international students opportunities to develop their sociopragmatic competence both before and during placement. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at supporting international students who speak English as an additional language to develop their workplace communication during their studies.
KW - Allied health
KW - Field education
KW - International students
KW - Placement
KW - Social work
KW - Sociolinguistics
KW - Work-integrated learning
KW - Workplace communication
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85136945205
U2 - 10.1007/s10459-022-10155-1
DO - 10.1007/s10459-022-10155-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 35980516
AN - SCOPUS:85136945205
SN - 1382-4996
VL - 28
SP - 347
EP - 368
JO - Advances in Health Sciences Education
JF - Advances in Health Sciences Education
IS - 2
ER -